FanGraphs Baseball

Because managing editor Dave Cameron has chosen recently to reproduce himself, the responsibility of running and editing this site has fallen temporarily to idiots not only like the present author, but actually to that present author himself. A poor choice, that — and one that surely jeopardizes the health of FanGraphs.

A pleasure of editing is that it affords one the opportunity of working more closely with this site’s learned contributors. What else it means, though, is that certain less exhilarating transactions that require coverage typically require coverage by the editor, regardless of his qualifications for analyzing same. Which, that’s how it’s come to pass that I’m now writing this brief post about Emilio Bonifacio and Emilio Bonifacio’s one-year, $4 million deal with the Chicago White Sox.

Emilio Bonifacio is a known and mostly unremarkable quantity. So cajoled, one could probably manufacture a hot take of some sort regading him. What his resume indicates mostly, however, is that he offers a floor of about -1 win, a ceiling of about +3 wins, and is a strong candidate to produce something precisely in the middle of that given 600 plate appearances.

Here’s a haphazardly composed histogram, based only on the author’s whim, featuring a slightly more nuanced version of that same estimate:

On the one hand, paying $4 million for what Bonifacio is likely to produce over 500-600 plate appearances — that’s probably about right, given the market. That said, there have been a number of players with the ability to play second base — Dean Anna, Buck Britton, Ty Kelly, Tommy La Stella, Cord Phelps — who are projected to approximate Bonifacio’s production and who’ve required a less substantial investment.

Moreover, if the White Sox harbor notions of qualifying for the postseason — and given their acquisitions this offseason of Melky Cabrera and Adam LaRoche and David Robertson and Jeff Samardzija, it would appear as though the front office does harbor such notions — Bonifacio doesn’t so much actively help the club achieve that goal as he does protect them from catastrophe.

Protecting a club from catastrophe is important. Notably, however, the White Sox already appear to have a number of players qualified for that role. Here, for sake of reference, are the Steamer projections (per 600 plate appearances) not just for Bonifacio, but also the other second base-types also on Chicago’s 40-man roster:

Garcia’s projection is something less than inspiring — and Saladino’s might be half-a-win optimistic insofar as he receives the entire shortstop positional adjustment despite possessing slightly below-average shortstop defense. Those caveats having been made, there do appear to be alternatives to Bonifacio.

So why sign him? Taking for granted that the White Sox front office is populated by intelligent people compensated decently to consider such questions, there’s probably a reasonable answer to this. What one must acknowledge first is that the commitment isn’t that large in the context of the current market. And that Bonifacio is also capable of playing the outfield. Also, the presence of Bonifacio allows the club to enter spring training without the obligation of handing the starting job to a rookie or near-rookie. That, augmented by Bonifacio’s actual value in wins, is the service for which the White Sox have paid $4 million.

The Phillies just traded Marlon Byrd to the Reds for a pitcher that couldn’t crack Cincinnati’s top ten prospect lists. Could the Phillies have done better than Ben Lively for their asset? The answer to that question depends on deception.

Even though Byrd’s old, he’s been an above-average player the last two years, and he’s signed to a nice contract. Ever since he started swinging harder, missing more, and hitting the ball in the air more, he’s showed enough power to make up for declining defense and patience. Given his publicly-admitted adjustments, and the now two-year sample of evidence, maybe the deceptive thing about Byrd is that he’s not the same player that Steamer is projecting for a half win.

If you base Byrd’s trade value on recent outfield signings instead of straight dollars per win, he has more trade value. In terms of on-field production over the last two years, he compares favorably to another older corner outfielder that got two years and $21 million from the Mets at least. He’d even represent some surplus value when compared to Michael Cuddyer, probably.

Source: FanGraphs — Marlon Byrd, Michael Cuddyer

So you can see that there’s probably not a lot of consensus when it comes to Marlon Byrd’s trade value. There’s even less consensus about the value of the prospect going back to the Phillies.

Read the rest on Just A Bit Outside.

After having typically appeared in the very hallowed pages of Baseball Think Factory, Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections have been released at FanGraphs the past couple years. The exercise continues this offseason. Below are the projections for the Detroit Tigers. Szymborski can be found at ESPN and on Twitter at @DSzymborski.

Other Projections: Atlanta / Chicago AL / Colorado / Los Angeles AL / Miami / Milwaukee / Oakland / San Francisco / St. Louis / Tampa Bay / Washington.

Batters
While it might seem as though, at points during his MVP rivalry with Mike Trout, that this site’s authors made it their business to convince all of America about how Miguel Cabrera was a worthless trash heap of a ballplayer, that’s very clearly not the case. What he is, in reality, is one of the most talented hitters in baseball history. Indeed, among all qualified hitters ever, Cabrera has produced the 26th-best park-adjusted batting line (tied with Joe DiMaggio, for example). Even a couple years after Cabrera’s 30th birthday, ZiPS still regards him as an elite batsman.

One thing Cabrera wasn’t, really, was a talented defensive third baseman. Two years ago, for example, ZiPS projected Cabrera to save -6 runs (or concede +6 runs, as it were) at third base. Not excellent, that. By way of comparison, however, consider current third baseman Nick Castellanos’s projection at that same position: -12 runs saved (or +12 runs conceded, as it were). Even more not excellent, that. He’s forecast to produce an above-average batting line, but it would seem as though some manner of change — either moving off of, or steadily improving at, the position — is necessary.

Read the rest of this entry »

Times have changed, finally, in Philadelphia. Approximately two years after most of the rest of us thought it was time to blow things up, and six months after GM Ruben Amaro reportedly told closer Jonathan Papelbon that the team was still attempting to win now, the Philles have eventually seen the light and committed to the future. Jimmy Rollins is gone. Marlon Byrd is gone. Antonio Bastardo is gone. Cole Hamels may yet be gone. Cliff Lee, presuming he can show he’s healthy early in 2015, will almost certainly be gone by July. Papelbon probably follows. It’s possible Chase Utley sticks it out to maintain one last link to the past, but it’s clear the Phillies we knew are gone, and the next year or two (or more) are going to be a difficult transition.

I didn’t mention Ryan Howard because when you read a quote like this, as Amaro told a local radio station just before the holidays…

“We’ve talked to Ryan,” Amaro said in an interview with 97.5 The Fanatic’s Mike Missanelli on Friday afternoon. “And I told him that in our situation it would probably bode better for the organization not with him but without him. With that said if he’s with us, then we’ll work around him. We’ll hope he puts up the kind of numbers that we hope he can and we’ll see where it goes from there.”

…then it deserves its own section.

When your general manager says the team is better off without you and that if you’re still in town, then they will “work around [you],” well, it’s clear you’re definitely gone. Or, at least, will be at some point, since he’s not been moved yet. You can live with an aging Utley, because he’s still a solid player with no obvious successor. You can’t keep Howard around because he’s a negative for a National League club and each plate appearance that goes to him takes one away from Maikel Franco or Cody Asche or Darin Ruf. None are going to be the next great Phillies first baseman, but there’s value in simply removing an aging, ineffective Howard from the equation, if only emotionally.

I hardly need to remind you of how difficult it’s going to be for the Phillies to actually make a Howard move, because you know all the reasons why. Instead, let’s play a game. Let’s find Howard a new home. Would any team bother with the roster spot? Is there actually a place where he could be of value? Maybe this will be fun. Unless you’re a Phillies fan, of course. Then it won’t be much fun at all.

* * * Read the rest of this entry »

Ben and Russell preview the Hall of Fame voting results and review election season with Sports Illustrated’s Jay Jaffe.

Joe Smith had a favorite team growing up. As is the case for most players, his allegiances changed when he began playing professional baseball. Smith was drafted by the Mets and has gone on to play for the Indians and now the Angels.

According to the side-arming reliever, the change in rooting interests goes beyond the company name on the paychecks being cashed. The logo on your laundry matters, but it’s not the only thing.

“You’re no longer an outsider looking in, so you become more a fan of the game,” said Smith.” You become a fan of people in the game. You get to know guys and find out who is a good person as well as a good player. Instead of being a Cubs fan, like I was when I was younger, now I’m more like, ‘What’s a cool ballpark to go to?’ and ‘Who am I excited to watch play in this series?’

Sometimes the players you’re excited to see play end up beating you. Smith has good career numbers – a 2.78 ERA over 515 relief outings – but like every pitcher, he knows what it feels like to be humbled. That doesn’t mean he can’t appreciate greatness. Read the rest of this entry »

It technically happened two days ago — but also sort of happened just today for those among us who celebrate the New Year’s holiday (and its Eve) with sufficient piety. It, in this case, represents the official signing by the Dodgers of left-hander Brett Anderson to a one-year, $10 million contract upon which the two parties agreed in principle about two weeks ago (and which could pay even more to Anderson, if he meets certain incentives).

Anderson is intriguing, naturally, for what he’s been able to accomplish on the field. Among the 223 pitchers who’ve thrown 250-plus innings in a starting capacity since 2009, Anderson has recorded the 15th-best park-adjusted xFIP (tied with several others). Very positive, that. One is compelled to note almost immediately, however, that remaining on the field has been difficult. He’s averaged, by way of example, just 40 innings each of the last three seasons. Less positive, that.

New Dodgers GM Farhan Zaidi is less concerned about Anderson’s health than one might suppose given the latter’s history, characterizing Anderson’s injury-plagued seasons as “a run of bad luck.” Zaidi et al, being very smart and having a decidedly vested interest in the matter, are more qualified to speak on the issue than the present author. So I’ll stop doing it immediately.

Another uncertainty regarding Anderson, however — perhaps related to his injuries and perhaps not — concerns his fastball velocity. For, simultaneous to recording the worst park-adjusted xFIP (96 xFIP-) of his career in 2014, Anderson also recorded his lowest ever average fastball velocity (89.8 mph). There’s a distinct relationship between velocity and success, nor does Anderson appear to be immune from it.

Here, for example, is a graph of xFIP- versus average fastball velocity for all of Anderson’s seasons in which he’s faced at least 150 batters:

There’s been a remarkably strong relationship, one finds, between Anderson’s ability to throw the ball hard and to prevent runs (or, at least, do the things that lead to run prevention). Relative to previous years, he didn’t excel at the former in 2014 — and, though he produced an excellent ERA (68 ERA-) in 2014, both the indicators and his track record (which reveals no tendency to outperform his fielding-independent numbers) suggest that ERA was untenably low. As such, it really does appear as though throwing at least, say, 90 mph is of some importance to Anderson — and that dropping below that figure would challenge his ability to prevent runs at a league-average rate. Given the Dodgers’ aspirations at the moment, league-average innings are the sort they’d obviously prefer.

Trades don’t get a lot cleaner than the deal we just recently saw between the Mariners and the Padres. The Mariners needed a left-handed semi-regular outfielder, and had relievers to spare. The Padres needed a reliever, and had left-handed semi-regular outfielders to spare. So the two agreed to swap Seth Smith and Brandon Maurer, and they’re both easy, simple fits. Smith joins Justin Ruggiano in a right-field platoon. Maurer adds another big arm to a team that needed a big arm more than it needed an occasional pinch-hitter.

Just by talent, Maurer is the more intriguing of the two players. With the Mariners, he frustrated as a starting pitcher, then flourished when bumped to relief. All of his stuff played up, and if the Padres keep Maurer in the bullpen, there’s no reason to think he can’t be a big help right away. Out of the Mariner bullpen in 2014, Maurer finished with 38 strikeouts and five walks, and two of those walks were intentional. Of the 209 relievers who threw at least 30 innings, Maurer wound up with the second-lowest unintentional walk rate, and he struck out a quarter of the batters he faced.

A useful statistic is strikeout rate minus walk rate. It holds greater significance than the more familiar strikeout-to-walk ratio. Last year’s bullpen leader in the statistic, naturally, was Aroldis Chapman. Maurer ranked 25th, placing him in the top 12 percent. He was tied with another recent Padres bullpen acquisition, Shawn Kelley. Maurer ranked ahead of names like Glen Perkins and Tyler Clippard. It’s pretty well established that Maurer can be good in relief. He’s a guy with future closer potential.

As a reliever-for-outfielder swap, the trade’s fair. Where it gets really interesting is if the Padres decide to try Maurer as a starter again. In Seattle, he’d had the door all but closed on the possibility. But the Padres say they don’t yet know how Maurer is going to be used, in the short-term or in the long-term. Probably, he’ll end up a reliever, but he’s just 24 years old, in a new organization. And though the Mariners grew frustrated by Maurer’s lack of progress out of the rotation, he shares a lot in common with a member of the current Padres staff, who was sold cheaply by the A’s.

The Padres picked up Tyson Ross in November 2012, giving up Andy Parrino and Andrew Werner. Parrino is a player of no consequence, and Werner hasn’t pitched in the majors since. Though Ross was inconsistent with the A’s, the Padres have turned him into a reliable front-of-the-rotation starter. That’s not an easy thing to do — if it were, it would happen a lot more often — but you can see where Ross changed, and you can see how Maurer might fit a similar profile.

Both Ross and Maurer are right-handed. One’s listed at 6-foot-5, 225 pounds, and the other’s listed at 6-5, 220. They’ve got powerful fastballs that can get into the mid-90s as a starter. Ross and Maurer have also shown powerful sliders, but early on they struggled to find a consistent weapon against lefties. As a starter with Oakland, Ross threw a fastball averaging 92 miles per hour, and a slider at 86. He occasionally dabbled with a changeup at 86. As a starter with Seattle, Maurer threw a fastball averaging 92 miles per hour, and a slider at 86. He dabbled with a changeup at 85, and a curveball at 74.

Read the rest at Just A Bit Outside.

On Wednesday, Kiley McDaniel published his consummately researched and demonstrably authoritative prospect list for the San Diego Padres. What follows is a different exercise than that, one much smaller in scope and designed to identify not San Diego’s top overall prospects but rather the rookie-eligible players in the Padres system who are most ready to produce wins at the major-league level in 2015 (regardless of whether they’re likely to receive the opportunity to do so). No attempt has been made, in other words, to account for future value.

Below are the top-five prospects in the Padres system by projected WAR. To assemble this brief list, what I’ve done is to locate the Steamer 600 projections for all the prospects to whom McDaniel assessed a Future Value grade of 40 or greater. Hitters’ numbers are normalized to 550 plate appearances; starting pitchers’, to 150 innings — i.e. the playing-time thresholds at which a league-average player would produce a 2.0 WAR. Catcher projections are prorated to 415 plate appearances to account for their reduced playing time.

Note that, in many cases, defensive value has been calculated entirely by positional adjustment based on the relevant player’s minor-league defensive starts — which is to say, there has been no attempt to account for the runs a player is likely to save in the field. As a result, players with an impressive offensive profile relative to their position are sometimes perhaps overvalued — that is, in such cases where their actual defensive skills are sub-par.

5. Austin Hedges, C (Profile)

For a player such as Hedges, whose value is tied much more closely to his defensive than offensive skills, Steamer’s projections are likely to skew towards the conservative side. For minor leaguers, Steamer’s defensive forecasts are based largely (if not entirely) on positional adjustment — which, that’s generous for catchers, anyway. As McDaniel notes, though, Hedges is a candidate to save a non-negligible quantity of runs beyond that. Adding five runs (0.5 WAR) to Hedges’ projections wouldn’t be entirely irresponsible.

Read the rest of this entry »